465 Responses

It's interesting the way the news articles seem to have been using "Mega Conspiracy"...

Dotcom and six others are alleged to be part of a group called the "Mega Conspiracy",

(From NZ Herald today)

It's usually used in a way that would imply to anyone not familiar with the case or FBI indictment that they were calling themselves "Mega Conspiracy" - which of course tends to suggest they were indeed knowingly up to no good.

As for the cost to the NZ taxpayer - 76 officers, two helicopters, etc - if Dotcom is extradited (or deported perhaps) then who gets the seized property? Millions of dollars of property has been seized by the NZ Police and I can't imagine the Americans have any claim to it, so who gets it? Perhaps that pays for the operation (and so much more)?

There's a predictable bitter irony to the fact that one of the few businesses that showed it was possible to make good money by charging reasonable (and even optional!) fees for people to consume media online has been targetted here. I'd like to think that the MPAA and RIAA took this opportunity to launch their own international services, but they've hardly been managed with an eye to engaging positively with online consumers so far, so why would they start now?

I'll point out that any extradition will not be because of the copyright issue. The Extradition Act 1999, s4(2), does not allow extradition for an offence where the maximum penalty for that offence under NZ law is less than 12 months, and s198(4)(b) of the Copyright Act 1994 provides for a maximum penalty for criminal copyright infringement (being infringement for commercial gain) of three months.

Extradition therefore must be for one of the "criminal" matters, and is still up for decision and appeal through the courts. Extradition is a judicial process, not an administrative one, and unlike others I'm not really willing to credit our judiciary with a deep-seated desire to supplicate before corporate American dosh.

When the warning is that firearms are involved, the AOS will usually be present. My understanding was that a number of properties had been raided, not just the mansion. That would justify a large deployment of officers across the city.

Just about everyone ever arrested has been on unproven allegations - the proof or otherwise happens in court, which can only come after the arrest.

I'm getting tired of people (many of whom should know better) leaping on this as though the police have over-reacted just because those people feel copyright law is broken and therefore any action taken in its name must be wrong. If you've read the indictment, the primary charges are racketeering and money laundering of proceeds of criminal copyright activity. Those charges fall within our extradition treaty as potentially justifying extradition, but it will be up to the court today to determine whether they meet the grounds for approval.

Also, I was told on Saturday by Someone Who Knows About Such Things(tm) that, although the USG seized the domain name, the IP address was still active and the servers were still online at that time. I can neither confirm nor dent ;-)

Undoubtedly, but the DoJ PR indicates that the "Mega-Conspiracy" investigation has been going on for 2 years. I'm surprised it's taken so long for the US to have a go at the cyber-lockers. I'm guessing they really wanted to have their ducks in a row before they moved.

Arrests do almost always happen before trials, rather than after them.

Indeed. The forcible closure, without a trial, of a service used legitimately by millions of people seems a little different, though.

It's interesting that the key to the indictment is that the defendants are alleged to have committed infringements on a scale that would be familiar to most of us here -- personally accessing infringing content, sharing links with others. Without that, as I understand it, the subsequent racketeering and money-laundering charges don't fly.

Interesting also that it's only now become clear why Gin Wigmore's name was mentioned in the Universal DMCA take down last year. Megaupload claimed rightly that Gin didn't feature in the YouTube clip but according to yesterday's SST story she actually recorded a pro Megaupload track but this (as far as I know) hasn't seen the light of day. It appears Universal was jumping the gun and perhaps fearful when they included Gin in the copyright claim.

It’s interesting that the key to the indictment is that the defendants are alleged to have committed infringements on a scale that would be familiar to most of us here – personally accessing infringing content, sharing links with others. Without that, as I understand it, the subsequent racketeering and money-laundering charges don’t fly.

My reading is that their alleged personal infringement is used to show that they knew their system was being used for copyright infringement and not only did nothing to stop it, but profited personally and financially from that fact. They are alleged to not have taken down material when advised under the DMCA that it was present, but only to have removed the reported links to the material, while leaving it and unreported links in place so that infringement could still continue. This, if proven, would be a breach of the 'safe harbour' provisions. The financial profit aspect would go to the criminal copyright infringement charge, and the 'money laundering' charge would relate to moving the profits out of the US.

It will also be interesting to see if they paid the relevant taxes in the US and Hong Kong (or even here). That's how Al Capone was taken down, remember. (No, I am not comparing Capone's activities with Dotcom/Schmitz, don't be silly.)